An Illuminating Journey

Reading cosmic history from the Big Bang's radiation

Holding his 3-month-old son, Joshua, in his arms, cosmologist David N. Spergel will proudly watch the launch next week of a NASA satellite that he helped father. The satellite will record the remnant glow from the infant universe in greater detail than ever before. Even before the Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite gets off the ground, however, Spergel and his colleagues have hatched a plan to examine that early light in a dramatically different way.

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